Most interesting of all is the alleged MMOFPS titled (codenamed?) Titan. It was my guess all along that Blizzard would take their ability to conquer entire video game genres and not only take over MMOFPS for the rest of all time but actually make the first truly successful one that would launch a plethora of off-shoots and copy cats.

Planetside can be heralded as the first with moderate success and definitely deserves the accolades, but it will be forgotten entirely if Blizzard pulls off a hit ó and they will. If itís merely a codename then itís not worth thinking about, but if it is a real title for the game then Iím thinking something Halo-esque or maybe even Gears of Waríish. Iíll go ahead and lock in with that setting.

As a member of the media (albeit not gaming media), I have to laugh at the idea of a Blizz exec saying to the effect that "the media shouldn't know anything about it." If the media only printed what people wanted the media to know about, the media would be corporate PR or public affairs, not media.

Anyway, certainly it's newsworthy they acknowledge it at all, I didn't mean to rain on that aspect of the parade. I hope it's something good and not something we'll never get to see (Warcraft Adventures, Starcraft: Ghost or, say, Mythic's Imperator).

I'll be surprised if Blizzard doesn't dip into the App Store waters at some point, in some form, btw. Even if clearly this isn't that.

I've seen Vanilla WoW running on a phone. It's a lot harder now that WoW is 24gb instead of 3gb though.

The running of WoW on phones that I have seen was someone running WoW on a PC and then streaming the game over to the phone where the person on the phone could control what was happening on the PC. That would mean it wouldn't matter how big WoW was.

since it's Activision, it'll probably be COD (except they keep stressing it's a new IP)

I thought I heard a rumor that this new MMO would be in conjunction with the new Bungie that officially split from Microsoft, so it would be like a Halo setting/world.

If so, I really hope Blizzard does their own art style because I really don't like the Halo setting. It's too drab and dull (visually speaking). Blizzard's artists are known for the cartoonish style and twist they have in their art, which I really love.

<edit> Remember, the new Bungie signed a long-term publishing deal with Activision Blizzard.

"We're very confident in that product. It's an awesome one," Sams added. "We're playing it already. It is a total ball to play. We think that the reach of that product is greater than anything that we've done before. We're very excited about that. I believe that it's the type of game that will have a very long life, much like World of Warcraft has."

"So, hopefully in 10, 15 and 20 years, that [new MMO] will still be growing strong and will have set a new mark in the industry for that type of product."

Clearly it's a ping-pong MMO...

Anyway, he says they're transitioning a variety of key WoW developers over to the Titan team (I read it as the grizzled veterans are moving over to Titan while their young Padawans continue working on and running WoW). Doesn't suggest to me this is a co-op with Bungie as I don't think console shooter guys and PC WoW devs seems like an ideal mix.

I'm still unconvinced a publisher can have two... Titanic monthly-fee MMOs without cannibalizing some of its own subscribership. Most people I know don't have enough time hardly for one MMO, much less two (unless one's a Free to Play). Yes, it's all revenue to the same company so what do they care? But ya know, maybe half your guild runs over to the new, shiny, etc.; there's impacts like that to ponder.

I'm still unconvinced a publisher can have two... Titanic monthly-fee MMOs without cannibalizing some of its own subscribership.

It is better that the one that cannibalizing your subscriberships is your own MMO.

I think it is good for Blizzard to prepare for post-WoW era before they start to lose their market share to other. While there is no close competitor to WoW so far, I think eventually someone will get it right and produce a new MMO that beat WoW's popularity.

SOMETHING NEW We've got something new to share, and we're bringing it to PAX East! If you're attending, be sure to arrive at the Naga theater early in order to secure a seat for our presentation. If you're not going to PAX East this year (or you just went a little too crazy the night before), we've got you covered -- the whole thing is being streamed live on the official PAX Twitch channel at 10:00 a.m. EDT Friday, March 22.

Logged

Because I can,also because I don't care what you want.XBL: OriginalCeeKayWii U: CeeKay

I guess the era of subscription based MMO is over. They're probably going to rework the whole thing into a F2P MMO.

I wouldn't think that they would have to entirely scrap their work thus far to make that change. I'm wondering if what they had just wasn't good by today's standards? A nuke-it-from-orbit and start again approach doesn't sound good.

I don't know, it sounds like less of a pure business case like that and more of a "what does the next level of MMO even mean at this point? do we want to spend the next 5 years even trying to do that? how far would the market change in that time? how many other games could we make in that time instead?" conundrum.

I'm sure there are plenty of lessons they've learned in the many years of trying to build Titan, but whether the people who learned those lessons are still around for the next game(s) might be another matter.